External Plugins

netdata plugins

netdata supports several plugin methods:

Plugins using the native netdata plugin API (described below in detail), go to /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/*.plugin. These can be written in any computer language (i.e. c, c++, go, lua, java, ruby, or whatever...).

Additionally, netdata offers a set of modular plugins. They are modular since they accept custom made modules to be included. Writing modules for these plugins is easier than accessing the native netdata API directly.

modules of the default bash plugin (charts.d.plugin), go to /usr/libexec/netdata/charts.d/*.chart.sh.

Each of these modular plugins has each own methods for defining modules. Please check the examples and their documentation.

native netdata plugin API

The information below is the standard netdata plugin API.

Any program that can print a few values to its standard output can become
a netdata plugin.

There are 7 lines netdata parses. lines starting with:

CHART - create or update a chart

DIMENSION - add or update a dimension to the chart just created

BEGIN - initialize data collection for a chart

SET - set the value of a dimension for the initialized chart

END - complete data collection for the initialized chart

FLUSH - ignore the last collected values

DISABLE - disable this plugin

a single program can produce any number of charts with any number of dimensions
each.

charts can also be added any time (not just the beginning).

command line parameters

The plugin should accept just one parameter: the number of seconds it is
expected to update the values for its charts. The value passed by netdata
to the plugin is controlled via its configuration file (so there is not need
for the plugin to handle this configuration option). Check External Plugins Configuration

The script can overwrite the update frequency. For example, the server may
request per second updates, but the script may overwrite this to one update
every 5 seconds.

environment variables

There are a few environment variables that are set by netdata and are
available for the plugin to use.

variable

description

NETDATA_CONFIG_DIR

The directory where all netdata related configuration should be stored. If the plugin requires custom configuration, this is the place to save it.

NETDATA_PLUGINS_DIR

The directory where all netdata plugins are stored.

NETDATA_WEB_DIR

The directory where the web files of netdata are saved.

NETDATA_CACHE_DIR

The directory where the cache files of netdata are stored. Use this directory if the plugin requires a place to store data. A new directory should be created for the plugin for this purpose, inside this directory.

NETDATA_LOG_DIR

The directory where the log files are stored. By default the stderr output of the plugin will be saved in the error.log file of netdata.

NETDATA_HOST_PREFIX

This is used in environments where system directories like /sys and /proc have to be accessed at a different path.

NETDATA_DEBUG_FLAGS

This is a number (probably in hex starting with 0x), that enables certain netdata debugging features. Check Tracing Options for more information.

NETDATA_UPDATE_EVERY

The minimum number of seconds between chart refreshes. This is like the internal clock of netdata (it is user configurable, defaulting to 1). There is no meaning for a plugin to update its values more frequently than this number of seconds.

the output of the plugin

The plugin should output instructions for netdata to its output (stdout). Since this uses pipes, please make sure you flush stdout after every iteration.

DISABLE

DISABLE will disable this plugin. This will prevent netdata from restarting the plugin. You can also exit with the value 1 to have the same effect.

CHART

uniquely identifies the chart,
this is what will be needed to add values to the chart

the type part controls the menu the charts will appear in

name

is the name that will be presented to the user instead of id in type.id. This means that only the id part of type.id is changed. When a name has been given, the chart is index (and can be referred) as both type.id and type.name. You can set name to '', or null, or (null) to disable it.

title

the text above the chart

units

the label of the vertical axis of the chart,
all dimensions added to a chart should have the same units
of measurement

family

is used to group charts together
(for example all eth0 charts should say: eth0),
if empty or missing, the id part of type.id will be used

this controls the sub-menu on the dashboard

context

the context is giving the template of the chart. For example, if multiple charts present the same information for a different family, they should have the same context

this is used for looking up rendering information for the chart (colors, sizes, informational texts) and also apply alarms to it

charttype

one of line, area or stacked,
if empty or missing, the line will be used

priority

is the relative priority of the charts as rendered on the web page,
lower numbers make the charts appear before the ones with higher numbers,
if empty or missing, 1000 will be used

update_every

overwrite the update frequency set by the server,
if empty or missing, the user configured value will be used

options

a space separated list of options, enclosed in quotes. 4 options are currently supported: obsolete to mark a chart as obsolete (netdata will hide it and delete it after some time), detail to mark a chart as insignificant (this may be used by dashboards to make the charts smaller, or somehow visualize properly a less important chart), store_first to make netdata store the first collected value, assuming there was an invisible previous value set to zero (this is used by statsd charts - if the first data collected value of incremental dimensions is not zero based, unrealistic spikes will appear with this option set) and hidden to perform all operations on a chart, but do not offer it on dashboards (the chart will be send to backends). CHART options have been added in netdata v1.7 and the hidden option was added in 1.10.

plugin and module

both are just names that are used to let the user the plugin and its module that generated the chart. If plugin is unset or empty, netdata will automatically set the filename of the plugin that generated the chart. module has not default.

DIMENSION

DIMENSION defines a new dimension for the chart

the template is:

DIMENSION id [name [algorithm [multiplier [divisor [hidden]]]]]

where:

id

the id of this dimension (it is a text value, not numeric),
this will be needed later to add values to the dimension

We suggest to avoid using . in dimension ids. Backends expect metrics to be . separated and people will get confused if a dimension id contains a dot.

name

the name of the dimension as it will appear at the legend of the chart,
if empty or missing the id will be used

algorithm

one of:

absolute

the value is to drawn as-is (interpolated to second boundary),
if algorithm is empty, invalid or missing, absolute is used

incremental

the value increases over time,
the difference from the last value is presented in the chart,
the server interpolates the value and calculates a per second figure

percentage-of-absolute-row

the % of this value compared to the total of all dimensions

percentage-of-incremental-row

the % of this value compared to the incremental total of
all dimensions

multiplier

an integer value to multiply the collected value,
if empty or missing, 1 is used

divisor

an integer value to divide the collected value,
if empty or missing, 1 is used

hidden

giving the keyword hidden will make this dimension hidden,
it will take part in the calculations but will not be presented in the chart

VARIABLE

VARIABLE [SCOPE] name = value

VARIABLE defines a variable that can be used in alarms. This is to used for setting constants (like the max connections a server may accept).

Variables support 2 scopes:

GLOBAL or HOST to define the variable at the host level.

LOCAL or CHART to define the variable at the chart level. Use chart-local variables when the same variable may exist for different charts (i.e. netdata monitors 2 mysql servers, and you need to set the max_connections each server accepts). Using chart-local variables is the ideal to build alarm templates.

The position of the VARIABLE line, sets its default scope (in case you do not specify a scope). So, defining a VARIABLE before any CHART, or between END and BEGIN (outside any chart), sets GLOBAL scope, while defining a VARIABLE just after a CHART or a DIMENSION, or within the BEGIN - END block of a chart, sets LOCAL scope.

data collection

is the number of microseconds since the last update of the chart. It is optional.

Under heavy system load, the system may have some latency transferring
data from the plugins to netdata via the pipe. This number improves
accuracy significantly, since the plugin is able to calculate the
duration between its iterations better than netdata.

The first time the plugin is started, no microseconds should be given
to netdata.

SET id = value

id

is the unique identification of the dimension (of the chart just began)

value

is the collected value, only integer values are collected. If you want to push fractional values, multiply this value by 100 or 1000 and set the DIMENSION divider to 1000.

END

END does not take any parameters, it commits the collected values for all dimensions to the chart. If a dimensions was not SET, its value will be empty for this commit.

More SET lines may appear to update all the dimensions of the chart.
All of them in one BEGIN -> END block.

All SET lines within a single BEGIN -> END block have to refer to the
same chart.

If more charts need to be updated, each chart should have its own
BEGIN -> SET -> END block.

If, for any reason, a plugin has issued a BEGIN but wants to cancel it,
it can issue a FLUSH. The FLUSH command will instruct netdata to ignore
all the values collected since the last BEGIN command.

If a plugin does not behave properly (outputs invalid lines, or does not
follow these guidelines), will be disabled by netdata.

collected values

netdata will collect any signed value in the 64bit range:
-9.223.372.036.854.775.808 to +9.223.372.036.854.775.807

Internally, all calculations are made using 128 bit double precision and are
stored in 30 bits as floating point.

node.js is the fastest scripting language for collecting data. If your plugin needs to do a lot of work, compute values, etc, node.js is probably the best choice before moving to compiled code. Keep in mind though that node.js is not memory efficient; it will probably need more RAM compared to python.

BASH is the simplest scripting language for collecting values. It is the less efficient though in terms of CPU resources. You can use it to collect data quickly, but extensive use of it might use a lot of system resources.

C

Of course, C is the most efficient way of collecting data. This is why netdata itself is written in C.

Writing Plugins Properly

There are a few rules for writing plugins properly:

Respect system resources

Pay special attention to efficiency:

Initialize everything once, at the beginning. Initialization is not an expensive operation. Your plugin will most probably be started once and run forever. So, do whatever heavy operation is needed at the beginning, just once.

Do the absolutely minimum while iterating to collect values repeatedly.

If you need to connect to another server to collect values, avoid re-connects if possible. Connect just once, with keep-alive (for HTTP) enabled and collect values using the same connection.

Avoid any CPU or memory heavy operation while collecting data. If you control memory allocation, avoid any memory allocation white iterating to collect values.

Avoid running external commands when possible. If you are writing shell scripts avoid especially pipes (each pipe is another fork, a very expensive operation).

Using the above procedure, your plugin will be synchronized to start data collection on steps of update_every. There will be no need to keep track of latencies in data collection.

Netdata interpolates values to second boundaries, so even if your plugin is not perfectly aligned it does not matter. Netdata will find out. When your plugin works in increments of update_every, there will be no gaps in the charts due to the possible cumulative micro-delays in data collection. Gaps will only appear if the data collection is really delayed.

If you are not sure of memory leaks, exit every one hour. Netdata will re-start your process.

If possible, try to autodetect if your plugin should be enabled, without any configuration.